Donald Trump used a stack of printed-out news stories as a way to defend himself amid his ongoing “hush money” trial. A CNN fact-checker called most of what he said “uncheckable, subjective opinion.”
“I’m supposed to be in New Hampshire, I’m supposed to be in Georgia, I’m supposed to be in North Carolina, South Carolina, I’m supposed to be in a lot of different places campaigning, but I’m I’ve been here all day on a trial that really isn’t a fair trial,” Trump said while shuffling through the individually stapled sets of articles in front of media outlets on Thursday afternoon.
“These are all stories over the last few days from legal experts. This is Wall Street Journal editorial,” Trump continued. “But all of these are stories from legal experts saying how this is not a case. ‘The case is ridiculous.’ There’s another one, ‘The case is ridiculous, Trump indictment, it’s missing fraud, there is no fraud.’”
Trump called his case a “whopping outrage” and went on to claim the news stories were written by credible sources. He named several notable Fox News contributors as authoring the stories, including Andrew McCarthy and Jonathan Turley. He also continued to slam the prosecutor assigned to his case, Alvin Bragg.
“All of these stories are stories of how — and these are done by the experts and editorials. Bragg falsified business records, and uh, he falsifies them, he’s the one, he’s the fraud. Take a look; all of these are stories. You see them here,” Trump continued to read. “Even the Rolling Stone — no friend of mine — they don’t like, it says, they don’t like Bragg’s chances on this case, it’s a disgrace.”
Flipping forward through the stack, Trump said after spotting one he liked, “That’s a nice headline, I’d like to read that one too.”
He concluded his remarks by saying: “The whole world is watching this hoax. You got a DA that’s out of control, you have a judge that’s highly conflicted, the whole thing is a mess. Then you have the leading candidate, the leading crooked Joe Biden — he’s the one that should be on trial. He’s a crook.”
CNN’s fact-checker Daniel Dale weighed in on Trump’s comments, saying most of Trump’s speech was “mostly uncheckable, subjective opinion.”
“He did say some things that weren’t quite right. He repeated his false conspiracy theory that, essentially that, Joe Biden is behind this case, which was brought by a locally elected district attorney,” Dale explained. “He said, ‘Biden is behind it. He has his top people working with the DA’s office making sure everything goes right.’ There is no basis for that. That appears to be a reference to a former Justice Department official who went to work for the DA’s office, but there’s no sign that that was anything but his own employment decision.”
Dale added that Trump’s “pile he showed was largely his usual friends. The usual suspects praising Trump, defending Trump in the conservative media.”
Trump’s hush money trial began April 15. Trump allegedly instructed his former lawyer Michael Cohen to pay off adult film star Stormy Daniels to keep her quiet about an alleged affair between the two, covering up the payments by falsely logging them as Cohen’s legal fees.
The trial process will continue on Friday around 11:30 a.m. Eastern/8:30 a.m. Pacific, CNN noted.
